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I'm Ana, from Porto, Portugal, a former architect that found her passion in contemporary jewelry.Here I share fragments of my life, work and many sources of inspiration. Welcome, grab a cup of coffee (or a glass of wine!) and stay for as long as you like.

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Already visited last year, but there is still time to share with you some photos of the great exhibition dedicated to the SAAL Process, on display at Serralves Museum, in Porto.

Many have heard, but few know details or have visited the examples of social housing designed during this period of great social and political agitation in Portugal. Even I, as an architecture student at FAUP, little have learned about SAAL and was unaware of some buildings now on display (mea culpa). Perhaps to compensate, I now have the privilege of living in one of the most iconic examples (and more peculiar, after the recovery suffered later, in 2006) of Siza's work in Porto from this time: Bairro da Bouça.

SAAL (Local Ambulatory Support Service) was created after the April Revolution of 1974 and promoted the direct participation of the population in a social and architectural complex process that aimed to provide answers to housing needs of the most underprivileged. There are 10 projects on display, designed by architects with very familiar names and there are many technical drawings, models and photographs that allow us to get to know the reality of the time and how architecture tried to answer it - great the difference between what was done at the time and what is done now, huge the difference between the before and after state of those buildings. But the exhbition is also a pretext for reflection.

And under the motto Architecture and Participation, we were actually asked to participate and on December 14th we had the opportunity, while residents of Bairro da Bouça, to be part of the performance Composition for 128 Homes: the architectural space of the neighborhood served as scenario and the residents were eventually actors while producing actions and noises usually private for a surprised crowd as it walked along the three courtyards that divide the housing blocks.

It was such a great experience!

And if you're around Porto, don't miss the exhibition at Serralves: it's on display until February 1st.